杏吧原创

MORE than 5000 years after the invention of writing, you would think we would have completely nailed the best way to teach people to read 鈥� in most societies, after all. But you would be wrong. Not only have scientists long disagreed on the most effective methods, but their arguments have fuelled a decades-long, politicised 鈥渞eading war鈥� over how to teach children to read English.

Meanwhile, large numbers of children are struggling to achieve the standards they should for their age. Last year, just 33 per cent of 9 and 10-year-olds in the US were . 鈥淭he US has done poorly in teaching kids to read for a long time,鈥� says , a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And the problem isn鈥檛 confined to English-speaking countries: there is also confusion about how to teach children to read other languages.

A key battleground is a teaching technique known as phonics. In the US, poor literacy is often blamed on having too little phonics in the classroom. But, confusingly, researchers last year argued that by being taught too much . Herein lies the root of the problem: it is one thing to understand how kids learn to read and, it turns out, quite another to figure out how best to teach them. The good news is that researchers, having begun to enter the classroom, are finally getting to grips with how they can translate their insights to improve teaching and, ultimately, bring an end to the reading wars.

For 400 years or more, there has been debate about the best way to teach reading. Today, most reading researchers say the learning process begins when the student 鈥� generally assumed to be a child 鈥� realises that the words they speak can be represented by text. A child learning an alphabetic script like English must also recognise that spoken words can be broken down into small elements called phonemes 鈥� the /k/ sound in 鈥渃at鈥�, for instance 鈥� and that the alphabetic letters, or graphemes, represent these phonemes. With time, the child learns to associate each grapheme with one or more phonemes, and to blend strings of phonemes together to make words. They can then turn a written word, such as cat, first into a set of discrete phonemes 鈥� /k/a/t/ 鈥� and then into the spoken word 鈥渃at鈥�. Researchers call this decoding. Formal instruction in decoding, otherwise known as phonics, allows children to read many written words. Ultimately, those words become familiar enough that the child recognises them instantly and knows how to pronounce them without decoding.

鈥淧honics has been a part of reading education in England since the 19th century,鈥� says , who studies early education at University College London (UCL). But in 2006, after the publication of a government-commissioned , phonics instruction gained a more dominant role. This is what is undermining reading education in England, Wyse and , also at UCL, concluded last year .

The trouble is that there is much more to reading than just decoding. Take a simple written word like bow, which has several meanings and two distinct pronunciations. Decoding alone won鈥檛 help someone select the right combination of these. They must also use contextual cues from the text, such as the context contained in an entire sentence: 鈥渂ow if you meet the king鈥� versus 鈥淚 can tie a bow鈥�, for example. In other words, children need to understand what they read.

We have known for decades that reading instruction is less effective if children are taught to decode lists of words shorn of context. Better results are seen . In addition, it helps for teachers to emphasise that decoding is a tool to aid reading comprehension. Some reading researchers say . But Wyse and Bradbury found that only about a quarter of the teachers in their study agreed that they did. Wyse thinks there are several reasons for the excessive focus on phonics, not least that young children are required to take a . 鈥淭eachers will teach to the test because there are implications if the children don鈥檛 pass,鈥� he says.

The situation is different in the US. For years, teachers in many states have placed books at the heart of the reading curriculum and encouraged children to derive meaning from them. In recent years, however, prominent commentators have argued in and that this approach is largely to blame for the reading crisis in the US. How can that be, given what the science says?

Balancing act

The problem is one of emphasis. The reading approach long favoured in many US schools is known as the because it instructs children to use three different strategies while reading. Two of those 鈥渃ues鈥� are semantics (meaning) and syntax (sentence structure): in essence, using contextual cues to check whether the words make sense. That fits with the science. However, children may then be encouraged to use this information to predict 鈥� or, more bluntly, to guess 鈥� what word comes next in a sentence. (The boy is flying his鈥� what? Perhaps his kite?) Then comes the third cue: they look at the letters in that word and check whether or not they match their prediction.

This may sound curiously back-to-front. In fact, very few reading researchers recommend the three-cueing system because it puts decoding at the end of the reading process rather than at the beginning. However, some are equally concerned that the backlash against it has seen commentators suggest children shouldn鈥檛 be taught to use cues at all because they can . This could lead to reading curricula in the US that contain phonics and little else, says at the University at Albany, New York. She points out that many schools experimented with such an approach in the early 2000s, during a federal education programme called . A government . 鈥淜ids got better at phonics, but they didn鈥檛 get better at reading comprehension,鈥� says Scanlon. Other researchers argue that make it far from clear that Reading First turned children into great decoders but poor readers. Nevertheless, Scanlon鈥檚 concerns do mirror those of Wyse and Bradbury.

What is needed, say these researchers, is a balanced approach to reading instruction that while remembering that the goal of reading is to understand texts. Over the past 25 years, Scanlon and her colleagues have been working on exactly such a method, and their research suggests that the strategy is effective. However, it is specifically designed to help children identified as having difficulties with reading, in small groups or even one-to-one. We still don鈥檛 really know the best way to teach such skills to a classroom of children, for the simple reason that understanding the teaching of reading, as opposed to understanding how children learn to read, hasn鈥檛 always been a research priority.

鈥淚t鈥檚 one thing to say: we know how the brain learns how to read,鈥� says at the University of Virginia. 鈥淚t鈥檚 another thing to say: we know how to take that science and translate it into effective practices that teachers can actually implement.鈥� What researchers like Solari are discovering is that . 鈥淚t鈥檚 really hard to do that kind of research,鈥� says Seidenberg. 鈥淭here are so many factors floating around.鈥�

For instance, it is widely accepted that 鈥� which means that, in theory, a child may respond to the same lesson differently on a full or empty stomach. 鈥淗unger is a huge component to engagement,鈥� says Jessica Jang, who teaches first grade (6 and 7-year-olds) in a school in California. 鈥淲hen a student is hungry, this can result in misbehaviour, such as withdrawing from the lesson or causing disruptions.鈥�

Teachers also need to recognise that . at Brigham Young University, Utah, points to some research showing that if they are singled out for praise during reading lessons, which can undermine their willingness to participate in classroom activities.

What鈥檚 more, at Boston College in Massachusetts and at the University of Virginia have noted that the standards used to assess reading in the US are usually . This means that a teacher may, for example, have a narrow sense of the correct pronunciation of a word, and assume a child who pronounces it differently is struggling with decoding.

Back to the classroom

Proctor says researchers must spend time in the classroom. By observing teachers and children and talking to them, they can go beyond asking whether a curriculum is effective and begin to understand why. Since 2014, he and his colleagues have been working in US schools to develop a that plays to their strengths. For instance, it uses video to communicate information through images, action and sound to help them both in English and in the other language or languages they use 鈥� a vital skill for readers.

At a broader level, there is more awareness today that children face different demands depending on the language they are learning to read. For example, a strong focus on phonics makes sense when teaching children to read English, given the irregular spelling of many English words. But other languages, including so children don鈥檛 need to devote months or years to phonics lessons, says at the University of Haifa in Israel. Then there are non-alphabetic languages where individual symbols may represent whole words rather than phonemes, which makes phonics instruction far less important.

Share believes that the reading crises in some parts of the world may reflect the progress made in understanding reading in English. The problem is that English-specific findings might influence reading education policy in countries using writing systems for which they aren鈥檛 applicable. at the University of Oxford has come across many examples of this. One is the assumption that children will learn all of the characters of a writing system in their first school year 鈥� which may be true of an alphabetic writing system with a few dozen symbols, but not for non-alphabetic writing systems with hundreds or even thousands of symbols. 鈥淚t鈥檚 blindingly obvious, but it鈥檚 not in the theoretical models,鈥� she says.

For Nag, the solution is to ramp up research into understudied writing systems so that educational policies can be based on relevant reading science. Her work focuses on the of South and South-East Asia. Unlike the alphabets common to Europe and North America, here the units used to construct words 鈥� called akshara 鈥� are usually based on a single consonant that is modified by a smaller vowel symbol. This means akshara often represent syllables rather than phonemes. Nag has begun examining children鈥檚 literature across Asia 鈥� used in south India 鈥� to better understand the range of words encountered by young readers in this region.

Taking this international perspective is a win-win. , Share explained how studies in non-English reading can also advance English reading research. For instance, researchers studying reading acquisition in easy-to-decode languages, such as German, tend to use different measures 鈥� particularly fluency 鈥� to assess how well children are learning. Partly as a result of this, as an important measure of reading performance in English. It has even , which they now see as including problems with fluency and not just problems with decoding words.

Despite talk of reading crises in the US and elsewhere, in recent decades, reading research has greatly increased our understanding of how children learn this key skill. That is good news for parents and caregivers who want to help their children reach their full potential (see 鈥淩aising a reader鈥�). Clearly, though, there is still plenty to do 鈥� even if it appears that reading researchers now seem to be slowly moving in the right direction. 鈥淭ranslation of evidence into practice takes a really long time,鈥� says Solari. 鈥淚f this were easy, we would already have figured it out.鈥�

Colin Barras is a features editor at聽New 杏吧原创

New 杏吧原创 audio
You can now listen to many articles 鈥� look for the headphones icon in our app